


I don’t want to rest in peace (I’d rather be the ghost that annoys you)

by VinWrit



Series: Requests from Internet Strangers [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Ghost!AU, Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, ghost! Crowley and Aziraphale, human! au, it’s a bop, title from skulls by Bastille
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 22:50:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinWrit/pseuds/VinWrit
Summary: Nightingale house was, quite undisputedly, haunted.





	I don’t want to rest in peace (I’d rather be the ghost that annoys you)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by tumblr.

Nightingale House was, quite undisputedly, haunted.

The locals knew it, heard it in the wind through the eaves and in the rustling of the ivy that covered the west wing. They saw it in the gaslight that flickered in the windows at night, in the deep darkness that covered it even in the brightest days, in the sheer cleanliness of the place. In summer, a fire could be heard crackling on still nights, echoing for miles across the countryside, and when it was a cold day one could hear water running, even though the neighbouring stream had frozen solid.

All of these would be considered normal, except for the fact that the house had been empty since 1929. No homeless dared shelter in the doorway, and the doors weren’t boarded up. They didn’t need to be.

To gain a full understanding of the events that transpired in the autumn of 2018, one must first know that the house itself was odd. There were trapdoors and hidden corridors that were never in the original plans; the stone steps in the servants’ quarters still carried a smell of blood about them from an incident in which a maid had fallen down the stairs once, and the north wing was charred and unliveable, ash lying ankle-deep over mouldering carpet.

The north wing had always been spookily silent, tall and imposing, never lit up like the rest of the house.

But the most interesting thing about Nightingale House by far, anybody would tell you, is that the house itself seemed content, entrenched deep in a warm and timeless bubble of its own. The troubles of the world passed it by like a river over pebbles. It seemed harmless.

_At least it had, until the Ghost Trackers arrived._

* * *

  
** _ 09:56 AM, October 12th, 2018. _ **

“So. Nightingale house.” Said Josh, striding into the office. “According to the Wiki, it’s haunted and has been since the eighteen-hundreds. Last lot of residents died off in the ‘twenties. Some pretty odd phenomena have been recorded- lights on even when it’s empty and all sorts like that.”

Amelia, his colleague, looked up from her laptop. “Think we should check it out? Could get some good views for the channel with an overnight lockdown. God knows we need more subscriptions, and we could do with getting one over on those bastards from Buzzfeed.”

“Sounds good.” He took a slurp of day-old coffee. “I’ll see who looks after the estate, try and get some keys. If not, we can break in. Jemmy a window.”

* * *

  
Here’s something not many people understand about ghosts. A lot of them stay stuck in the past, simply because it’s easier. But a ghost, within reason and within their own imagination, can be whatever it wants.

So, while his companion was fond of his Victorian clothes and proper manner and couldn’t see himself as anything different, Anthony Crowley preferred to think of himself as a very cool ghost. He stayed as current as he could, much to the house’s other resident’s eternal disdain, although he was beginning to feel that his current outfit was a little out-of-style.

Maybe he needed a haircut. Although where a ghost would get a haircut, he had no clue.

* * *

**_20:23 PM, October 12th, 2018._**  
“For goodness’ sake!” Josh snarled, almost hurling his mobile across the room, and Amelia raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“I take it you spoke to whoever keeps the estate?”

“Yeah.” Josh sighed. “There’s a solicitor, a woman named Anathema Device. She said the keys were lost years ago, when her Grandma was in charge of the family law firm, although nobody seemed worried about it.”

Amelia shook her head. “So I take it that’s a bust?”

Josh grinned, and it was a little too sharp and a little too bright. “Not exactly. All we need is a well-aimed rock.”

* * *

  
Anathema Device was a psychic, although she didn’t readily like to admit it. She wasn’t like Madam Tracy next door, who held seances every week.

She could, however, sense ghosts. And she knew that the two in Nightingale House were fairly mellow souls, all things considered. She’d never really talked to them, but she could see their auras every time she came to the house.

Of course, Anathema knew exactly where the keys were kept. But she, being a smart woman, just didn’t want the folk in the house to be disturbed. They deserved their rest, and if they couldn’t get that, a peaceful un-life was better than being disturbed at all hours of the night.

* * *

**_13:45 PM, October 15th, 2018_**.  
R.P. Tyler watched the van arrive with palpable suspicion, and flagged it over. It wasn’t often you saw a large white van in Tadfield, and when you did it was normally the one the vet drove when he was on call.

The blonde woman driving it, in his rather biased opinion, didn’t look like a veterinary professional at all. Not with that much makeup caked on her face.

“So what are you here for? Just passing through?”

The wiry brunet man sat on the other side of the cabin passed over a small green business card.  
“Ghost Trackers. We’re here to film in the house, and it’ll go on YouTube.”

“What nonsense is that?” Tyler barked.

“On the internet.” The man’s companion explained. “We’ve got permission. Miss Device said we could.”

_Oh,_ thought Tyler. That sounded a little sketchy, because Miss Device was strangely protective of the old house. But he didn’t particularly like the solicitor, and he didn’t believe in ghosts.

“Go on, then. Just don’t disturb anyone.”

The driver grinned. “Oh, we won’t.”

* * *

_**12:00 AM, October 15th, 2018**_.  
Anthony woke when Ezra poked him in the side. Technically, he didn’t need to sleep, but it was nice occasionally.

“Someone’s on the drive. Three of them, with one of those horseless carriages like the one you love so much.”  
The blond’s face hadn’t paled, exactly, but his shape had become a little less defined around the edges in his worry, and he wrung his hands.

Anthony stood, choosing to float rather than walk towards the window, because it was fun, and looked through the thick leaded glass.

“A van, angel. It’s called a van. Nothing like the Bentley.” He grumbled.

“Do you think they’ll try to force us to- er- pass on?” Said Ezra, wringing his hands.

“They better not.” His companion grumbled, a pair of spectral and functionally useless sunglasses materialising on his nose.

* * *

  
**_06:21 AM, October 16th, 2018._**  
“So, dear viewers, welcome to the three-hundredth episode of _Facing the Paranormal_!” Josh crowed, staring into the lens of the camera with a wide grin. In front of him, Amelia was making sure that Garth the cameraman kept the broken window they’d entered through well out of the shot.

They were in the north wing of the house, slogging through piles of compacted, damp ash, mouldering paper and soot-stained books, and there was a jagged hole in the ceiling where the top floor had fallen through.

“For this episode, and to commemorate our second year in the business, we’re doing another lockdown. His time, we’re staying for three days at Nightingale House, in the village of Tadfield, Oxfordshire.”

Amelia jumped into the shot after a quick five-seconds to fix her hair. “Yeah!” She explained. “According to local lore, the lights are lit at night even when the house is empty, there are cold and hot spots, and the last resident – a man named Adam Young — died in seemingly mysterious circumstances, way back in 1929.”

That was a lie. Young had died of old age. But the white lie made it seem all the more dramatic, which in turn drew in viewers.

“But the ghost stories go even further back!” Josh continued. “A presence has been recorded here for almost two centuries, ever since 1851. So we’re going to try and find it!”

“We’re in the north wing right now, but it’s pretty quiet. So we’re gonna head into the main part of the house.”

* * *

  
**_06:46 AM, October 16th, 2018._**  
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Crowley! They’re exorcists!” Ezra fretted. “We have to do something!”

“Oh, I will, angel. Don’t worry.” Crowley said, rubbing his hands together.

* * *

**_08:10 AM, October 16th, 2018_**.  
“So we’re setting up shop in the library.” Amelia told the camera, as Josh set up all the various night-vision and thermographic sensors behind her. “In a sec we’ll check the room with the EMF reader, and keep moving through the house in that way.”

That was when Crowley appeared.

Well, he didn’t appear, not technically. He stayed well out of the spectrum of mortal sight. But his essence gathered in the room, floating over the chaise. He was, in an incredibly abstract way, lounging as if he owned the place.

“Amateurs.” He scoffed, watching them, before drifting over to the ancient wireless on the sideboard, next to the gramophone that Ezra played records on occasionally. A few seconds of fiddling with the dials, and he turned the volume up as far as it would go.

“_Be-el-ze-bub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me!_” Freddy Mercury’s voice blared out across the room, and all three mortals in the room jumped violently. As the song played on, they looked at each other nervously.

“Garth, are you getting this? Please tell me you’re getting this!” Amelia asked, eyes wide. The balding cameraman nodded shakily.

The ghost rolled his eyes. As the song ended, he pinged through the channels again, finding another station that was playing _Bohemian Rhapsody_, and then, after that finished, finding another again. If the ghost-hunters were going to be staying, he might as well annoy them as much as he could. Maybe he’d throw an _Under Pressure_ in every now and again, for variety.

Three sets of eyes were fixed on the rapidly-swivelling dial. As he crouched to turn up the volume even more, a hand holding an EMF meter passed right through where his chest would’ve been, and the little device began beeping madly. Josh, who was the owner of the hand, shivered.

Crowley winced at the uncomfortable sensation.  
_That was just rude. Who went around sticking their hands into people?_

He drifted away from the radio after about an hour, rapidly becoming bored, and swiped a thermos-cup off the table, splashing hot espresso everywhere. Amelia turned fast enough to give herself whiplash, staring at the remnants of her drink and tripping over several wires in her haste to get up.

_Oh_, thought Crowley. This was going to be fun.

* * *

**_  
_** 17:35 PM, October 16th, 2018.  
It was getting dark, so Josh decided to light a fire in the grate.

He’d only just got it going when Crowley smelled smoke: he’d been busy having a grand time, making ominous noises and leaving inexplicable footprints in the parlour, much to the film crew’s fear and excitement.

With a snarl of irritation, the ghost swept his arm through the air, and a jet of flame burst upwards into the man’s face; Crowley smiled in grim satisfaction as he invisibly knocked a pail of sand over the smouldering coals and the human jerked back away from him like a man possessed.

_He wouldn’t have fire here. Not again._

Almost as an afterthought, he flicked the gaslights on, leaving the human gaping.

* * *

  
_**19:43 PM, October 16th, 2018.**_  
“May I have this dance , angel?” Crowley called, descending the stairs in a pale-white dress flecked with moth-holes.

“_Oh_, Anthony!” Ezra sighed. “You do look stunning, dear. Absolutely stunning. Of course.”  
He clicked his fingers, and the gramophone burst into life, playing Moonlight Sonata.

“Feeling spooky?” Crowley smirked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, that seems to be the aesthetic you’re going for, my dear.”

“Touché.” The redhead said, taking his arm and beginning to lead him in a waltz across the polished floor, and the ghost-hunters watched in awe as the shadows- one of a man in a suit and top-hat, and one of a slim figure in a dress- danced across the wallpaper. 

* * *

**_20:51 PM, October 16th, 2018._**  
“We’ve done a little research.” Josh told the camera. “In the year 1901, a maid tripped and fell down the stairs. It’s not recorded wether she survived or not, but we think her spirit may still be hanging around. So we’re going to try to speak to her.”

Garth panned the camera to where Amelia sat, with a candle and an Ouija board on the table before her.

“Laura Palmer, are you there?” She intoned gently. “We’re trying to speak with the spirit of Laura Palmer.”

She couldn’t contain her gasp when the planchette beneath her fingers began to move.

**_NO, _**It spelled, and two distinctly male chuckles could be heard, only just audible.

“Sexist bastards.” The second voice hissed.

Hovering over the table, the two ghosts finished playing tug-of-war on the little card, and flipped the whole board.

* * *

**_21:12 PM, October 16th, 2018._**  
After some looking, Amelia found a bathroom on the third floor. She locked the door behind her, took her toiletry bag out of her backpack, and began to draw a bath.

Disturbed by the sound of water, Aziraphale left his library and went to investigate, and blanched when he saw the running tap.

_Oh, he couldn’t have that. Not at all._

When the water was near to overflowing, he reached invisibly through the wall and pulled the plug, blocking the tap with a flick of a hand and not noticing the camera that filmed the whole incident.

However, he couldn’t contain a self-righteous grin when she gasped upon seeing the strongly-worded note he’d traced upon the fogged-up mirror.

* * *

** _ 01:00 AM, October 17th, 2018. _ **

  
By midnight, both ghosts were rather irritated. The Ghost Trackers simply didn’t know when to give up.

Flickering lights? They’d seen them before. Cold spots? Nothing to be afraid of. Tormented moaning that echoed through the empty rooms? Old hat by now. All it did was draw attention to them, which annoyed Ezra.

His puppy-dog-eyes were enough to melt steel, and if Ezra started pouting… well. And the noise from the humans stopped the both of them from sleeping, too!

“That’s it, angel. I’m going for a drive.” Crowley snapped, after the forty-fourth attempt at scaring the film crew away- namely, making the walls drip blood – failed. “This is useless.”

“I think you’re rather terrifying, dear. Spine-chillingly spooky.” Ezra consoled him, patting his shoulder as he walked away, and vanishing the mess he’d made of the wallpaper.

* * *

  
“Holy shit, Josh! Look at this!”

Josh stumbled to the window, draining his thirteenth coffee of the day, and turned to Garth, who focused his camera on the view below at Amelia’s insistence.

Below, headlights glowing in the midnight rain, a vintage Bentley was doing doughnuts on the lawn. The engine was roaring, and it left brown muddy streaks in the grass. There was no driver.

* * *

_**06:12 AM, October 17th, 2018**_.  
“I just got a phone-call from a local resident.” Amelia told the camera, standing in the kitchen, and Josh gave her a thumbs-up from where he was checking the equipment for the millionth time. “A Mister Shadwell. Our thermo-imaging camera suggests that there are two presences in the house, and what Mr. Shadwell said has given us an idea of who they may be.”

Josh stepped into the shot, holding two sepia photographs.  
“According to Shadwell, and confirmed by the county records, in the year 1848 the house was bought by a bookseller named Ezra Fell. He was twenty-four, born into a wealthy family. He and his… associate, a man of the same age named Anthony Crowley, moved into the house soon after. The census for that year states that both were bachelors; and neither ever married, although it’s heavily implied in local legend that the two were lovers.”

“However,” Amelia chimed in again. “Tragedy soon struck. Mr. Crowley was in rather poor health, and a few years after they moved in- “  
Suddenly her eyes were glassy with tears, and she swallowed the painful lump in her throat.

“Ezra Fell went away on a business trip, and found his lover floating face-up in the bath when he returned. It was determined that Anthony had had a fit in the bath, lost consciousness, and drowned. The poor man.”

“After Crowley’s demise…” Josh continued, eyebrows furrowing and teeth chattering as the temperature in the room plummeted. “Fell, distraught after his partner’s death, withdrew from society. Within six months, a fire was reported in the North wing. A passer-by had dropped a smoking cigar-end on the dry grass, and the building caught fire. The house’s lone inhabitant was assumed to have fallen asleep among his books and perished in the blaze; no corpse was found.”

The air pressure in the room was rising, and their eyes shifted to one another. And then…_ it broke_.

All the used mugs left on the table smashed. There was nothing subtle about it now, as the draft began to seep in through cracks in the window, darkness creeping across the floor until the room was enveloped in darkness, the floor shaking. Across the room, a pair of oil paintings- previously images of birds- shifted and changed to depictions of two men, one dapper and plump and blond, the other wiry and pale with sunglasses and hair as red as blood, before falling off the wall. Distantly, somebody was screaming. All the draws flew open, cutlery and plates hurled everywhere by invisible hands, and Josh ducked to avoid being smacked in the face by a bread-board. A trap-door opened under Amelia’s feet, and she dropped with a shriek, falling into a broom-cupboard on the floor below.

But then, as soon as it had started, the onslaught receded. Garth grinned.

“Guys, I think we got ‘em.”

* * *

  
_**23:25 PM, October 17th, 2018**_.  
Crowley rustled the houseplants ominously as more footsteps approached the library. He’d hoped that the shock-factor of yesterday was enough to scare the mortals off. Apparently not.

“This is where the presences are centred. We know who they are and why they’re here. It’s Crowley and Fell.” Said Garth, setting up the camera.

“I always assumed as much.” Said a new voice. “It always made sense. Are you sure they want to rest in peace?”

“That’s what Josh said. Thanks to agreeing to this, Reverend Pickersgill.”

Crowley began to shake.  
“Angel!” He called. “_Angel_! They’re going to put us down!”

And, suddenly, he had a storm on his hands. Ezra’s footsteps shook the earth, and the reverend crossed himself. Garth turned on the camera. There was a tornado in the room, and Crowley felt as if his dead heart was about to start beating again. The table collapsed, books flying, candles flaring in the dark. Doors slammed shut.

* * *

The priest began to pray. He stopped, abruptly, when the room settled.

In the middle of the chaos, in the sudden silence, was a note. As he came down from his adrenaline high, Crowley saw his angel’s neat copperplate handwriting across the page.

“_We’re here because we like it, and you’re welcome to very fuck off._” Reverend Pickersgill read, gobsmacked., from the note that had appeared when the storm stopped.

He dropped it as a second hand began to write, crossed out the very, and added “_There’s no very, angel. It’s just_ **Fuck Off**.”

“Angels?” Pickersgill asked, voice trembling.

Ezra grinned. “Anthony, I believe that’s your cue.”

* * *

The sky outside darkened the second the words left the reverend’s mouth, and the group of humans stiffened as a flash of lightening lit up the shadows of two pairs of wings on the wall.

They flinched as something cold, like the scales of a reptile, brushed against their ankles, and a serpentine tongue flickered, icy, against exposed skin.

Amelia and Josh shrieked, and there was silence. A single feather, charred and ashy, drifted from the ceiling, and a voice echoed on the wind.

“_**Not anymore**_.” It hissed.

And the Ghost Trackers dropped their things and fled.

* * *

They didn’t see the two figures that waved from the windows as their van sped away.

* * *

  
“Anthony, dear, was that really necessary? It was a bit much.” Ezra said, turning.

“Nah.” Crowley took his hand and pressed a kiss to his lips and he smiled. “It was fun, though.”

“We really should get cleared up, love.” The blond laughed softly.

“C’mon angel. We can in a sec. They left pie in the cupboard.”

“Oh!” Ezra brightened, leading him towards the wrecked kitchen. “I do like pie!”


End file.
